Ride share programs sued over sexual assaults
Today, the NY Times reported that over 3000 sexual assaults were reported in US rides last year. Lyft has reportedly been sued by 55 women to date, for sexual assaults committed through their service. Both services screen their drivers for criminal backgrounds and persons required to register as sex offenders are not allowed to drive for either company.
Both ride share programs point out that their companies provide millions of rides per day, and in 99.9% of cases nothing remarkable happens. Still, news reports will focus on and inevitably legislative policy will target the extremely rare occurrences that barely ever happen.
Yesterday, Uber published it’s US Safety Report (you can read the executive summary here). Among other information, it provided statistics for sexual assaults and traffic crashes.
You can chose to spin the statistics the way the New York Times and the articles from earlier this week about dating apps did, and say that as a result of motor vehicle accidents during Uber rides there were 107 total fatalities in 2017 and 97 in 2018. That might be factually correct, but when taken in the context of another fact; “this year, nearly 4 million Uber trips happened every day in the US—more than 45 rides every second”, those stats seem pretty low.
To quantify the “problem”, rides where serious incidents occurred (such as sexual assaults or accidents in which injuries were sustained), accounted for 3/10,000ths of 1% of all rides. Because of this 0.0003% chance, you will now have people going to their legislators and asking them to create unnecessary new laws.The media could have just as easily reported that 99.9997% of all rides went perfectly. Couldn’t the NY Times have reported just how safe Uber and Lyft are instead of creating hysteria?
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They screened for sex offenders but got sex offenses anyway.
So the % of ridesharing sexual assaults perpetrated by those on the sex offender registry was: 0%.
I saw that on my news and in the ride share programs defense, they said a percentage of those complaints also include drivers who were sexually assaulted as well, not just passengers. Drivers who were attacked by the passengers maybe drunk coming back from a bar etc.
The drivers have background checks done on them, the passengers can be anyone who pays. Good news is, they use the app so most of the time the police can track down the passenger and the driver.
Sometimes there are multiple passengers. Imagine being a female driver and you pick up 5 guys needing a ride after a night of drinking?
It’s a bummer that I can’t drive for Uber or Lyft. I already have a full time job and it would be great for me to have a part time where I could control the hours. The extra money and time out of the house would be a big mental boost.
The last thing I would ever think of is hurting a stranger while driving them somewhere. Why would I want to put myself in such a terrible position? It would be guaranteed prison time and bankruptcy. I’m not moving backwards in life that way, even as an RSO.
Fake news! They are not into reporting the news, but making the news. Reports of a positive nature do not ‘fly’ in the fake news business.
Yes but they make money by causing hysteria.
I bet that after the release of this report that Ubers stock took a hit. They probably also had a few people cancel their account and go with the more safer ( Sarcasm ) Lift drivers.
I love how the news as well as the companies always make it a point to say they do background checks. Background checks don’t mean jack squat if someone hasn’t committed a crime YET. Duh.